Idea for a reform of US Presidential elections

[s_stabeler]

I've thought of a way to reform US presidential elections that might actually achieve a result closer to what people want, while preserving the Electoral College's role in preventing low population density areas being rendered irrelevant.

Currently, the election is fundamentally First-Past-The Post, in that the candidate getting more votes automatically wins all the electors for a state. I would change it to Single Transferrable Vote.

How STV works:

1. you rank candidates from most preferred to least preferred
2. they tally up the first-preference votes. if no candidate has over 50% of the vote, the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated, and they tally the second preferences of the eliminated candidate, adding the totals to the first preferences from before. This process continues until one candidate has over 50% of the vote. That candidate wins.

This would help in two ways. 1) it would mean third-party candidates may well get more first preferences, since someone could vote for a third-party candidate with their first preference, then one of the main two with their second preference ( or list two third party candidates and then a main party one, of course)
2) it may encourage parties to run more than one candidate for President- since it would be easier to prevent two Democrat candidates, for example, splitting each other's vote to the Republican candidate's benefit.

How this doesn't get rid of the electoral college is that states would still elect electors to the College- it would just make it clearer which of the final two candidates actually has the most support, since third party candidates would no longer irreversibly split the vote of a main party candidate.

States that could have swung if STV was in use ( going by any state where there were votes for other candidates totaling more than the margin of victory):
Clinton to Trump
New Mexico ( 5 electoral votes)
Colorado ( 9 electoral vote)
Nevada (6 electoral votes)
Maine at-Large ( 2 electoral votes)
New Hampshire (4 electoral votes)
Minnesota (10 electorla votes)
Total : 34 electoral votes
Trump To Clinton:
Pennsylvania ( 20 electoral votes)
Florida (29 electoral votes)
Michigan (16 electoral votes)
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes)
North Carolina (15 votes)(unlikely)
Total excluding NC: 74 electoral votes
Total including NC: 89 electoral votes.

That would translate to either a 40-elector or 55-elector swing to Clinton- the 40-elector option would mean it would depend on if the faithless electors again did it- if thye didn't, Hilary would win, if they did, neither candidate would win, so it would go to Congress. with a 55-elector swing, Clinton wins regardless.

[mjr]

Your #1 and #2 are very similar to what I've seen called "Approval Voting". It's also very similar to how the "primary" system in the U.S. works, except you pick 1 from the list, and the lower percentage candidates drop out on their own one by one. That's why the Republicans started off with seventeen candidates.

I actually like the idea of Approval Voting.

That said, I don't know that the other system would work as described. I don't know if I'd go "winner take all", but I might not be averse to doling out electors based on percentages (to the nearest whole elector, obviously).

I still think you'd need a "plus one" (i.e. half plus 1) to win the Presidency, though.

So if you took the three "largest" states by population (California, NY, Texas, I believe).

California was 55 electoral votes. They all went to Hillary. She got 61.5% of the vote. So she could get 34 EVs there, while Trump would get 18. Texas had 38 electoral votes. Trump got 52.6% of the vote there. So he could get 20 EVs there, while Hillary would get 16 (16.492).

NY had 29 EVs, and Hillary got 58.8% of the vote. So that would be 17 EV for her, and 11 for Trump.

So of those three, the reality is that HRC won 84 EV, and Trump won 38.

By percentage, though, HRC would get 67, and DJT would get 49.

The only other way I could really think of around it (and this would probably require legislation regarding gerrymandering) is for each district in each state to be 1 EV.

Either that, or make each state and DC 1 EV, and first to 26 wins.

[s_stabeler]

it IS similar, yes, but the difference is you only need to vote once- your vote transfers down the list as candidates get eliminated.

the issue with doling it out by percentage of the vote is that causes complaints about it meaning cities get to dominate rural areas- my idea is for a tweak to the current system to more accurately reflect who people would prefer in the Oval Office.